


Home Fried

by Fidelios_cabinet



Series: It's Annoying at the Top [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, sort-of RPF, talk show appearances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fidelios_cabinet/pseuds/Fidelios_cabinet
Summary: After the Aces' road trip east, Kent comes home to his new cat--and the inexorable demands of the Aces's public relations department. Bringing the cat to Ellen DeGeneres's show is the least of it.This fic contains innuendo but no actual X-rated activities. I do refer to high heels with a common piece of bad language. If, on reading this, you feel I should tag something, please let me know.Also, this hasn't been beta'd, so if you spot a typo or another problem, please let me know.





	1. The Naming of Cats

Home is the huntsman, home from the hill, and the sailor home from the sea.  
\--Robert Louis Stevenson

When Kent went into the office to check on the whereabouts of his cat, he was met by a delighted but intimidating assault from the clerical staff.

“Look who’s back!” crowed Jeannie, the receptionist. She was a retired showgirl, and would have been nearly six and a half feet in the come-fuck-me pumps she’d worn back in the day, with the feather headdress adding even more. Now she looked like a tall blonde soccer grandmother from Minneapolis. She was nice enough to Kent, the times he wandered into the front office, but never excited to see him. “Traci, go tell Baby Daddy’s home!”

“Hi, Jeannie. Ms. Wallace said to check here for the place my cat is boarding...”

“Oh, we’re keeping him here; he’s too big a sweetie to leave in a cage at the vet’s!”

“I never expected you guys to do that…”

“Oh, he’s no trouble at all! We’ve been having a great time spoiling him, don’t you know.” Her Scandosotan—or were they Scandakotan—vowels were well to the forefront. “He’s just a big love sponge, Kent. We’ve had a wonderful time with him.” Kent wondered if Jeannie had brought in her notorious fish and rice in cheese sauce hot dish for the beast, who could certainly have done with a little feeding up, the last time Kent had seen him.

Jeannie looked at him over her reading glasses. “Now, don’t worry; he’s gonna be a little funny-looking, what with the collar and the shaved coat and everything, but his stitches will be out soon and the bad spots he had under those mats are healing just fine. That fur will all grow out again in no time, and right now it’s just like petting velvet when you touch him. He’s doing great!”

“It sure sounds like you’ve been to a lot of trouble…” Kent tried again.

“Oh, it was our pleasure; he’s just a doll.”

Traci showed up with a closely-shaved cat wearing a Cone of Shame in her arms. “Here you are, Kent—you’ll have to bring him by for visits. We’ll miss him. PR has an Instagram account set up for him; they can give you the details. He’s a big hit already.”  
Jeannie was up from her desk chair and scritching the cat behind one ear. The cat looked at Kent and meowed silently. “Save me,” Kent could have sworn he was saying, “save me from the rich food and the feathers onna stick and the cuddling and the fish and rice with cheese sauce hot dish.”

“We’ll get his stuff all packed up for you while you check in with Ira and the kids in PR; Accounting’s got the receipts for the vet visit and stuff.”

“Ok,” said Kent, “Thanks a lot for everything. You’ve gone to more trouble than I intended; it would have been OK to board him until we got back to town, really…”

“No trouble at all!” chorused Jeannie and Traci and a couple of other women Kent thought were named Sarah and Liz. Traci still hadn’t handed over the cat.

 

Catless, he headed towards to PR offices.

Kent preferred that the various management minions who were necessary to the maintenance of a professional sports team be happy when they saw him coming, but Ira was perhaps frighteningly so this time. No, he was certainly frighteningly happy. Happier even than when he’d arranged for Kent to be photographed shirtless (and pantsless, with just a flesh-colored g-string) cavorting in the Bellagio fountains while holding the Stanley Cup overhead, which was one of the scariest moments of Kent’s professional life, including close encounters with Alexei Mashkov, Brent Burns, and Jordin Tootoo. His grin made Kent flash back onto Quint’s description of the shark in _Jaws_.

“Kent! The cat! It’s genius! You trying for my job dude because I could have stayed up late for a week and not topped that coup!” He started shuffling the papers on his desk. “We’ve got inquiries for appearances—again—from the local animal shelters and that’s just the start. His Instagram is going to make that damn Grumpy Cat yesterday’s news. I passed on some endorsement inquiries to your agent—that cat photographs like a dream now he’ll be unbelievable when the fur grows back in. And you” he looked Kent in the eye and grinned even wider while aiming twin finger guns at him, “are going to LA as soon as we can get you on a plane so you can hang out with your pal Jimmy Kimmel—and Ellen!”

Kent made a note not to wear anything he couldn’t wash the smarm out of for the former. “I didn’t know he was into cats.”

Ira chuckled; it wasn’t that much like a hyena’s cry, really. “Oh no that’s for your puck bunnies! Those girls in Providence have taken to Twitter so you’re gonna get a chance to make your case to America. I’m surprised you missed it.”

“Was that what Cherry was going on about? Because no one said anything in Boston, or in Buffalo. And in Toronto they mostly were asking about the hockey in Providence.” Because, let’s face it, given a chance between hearing about Jack Zimmermann playing hockey or hockey players misbehaving with young women, the Canadian media knew what their clientele considered important news.

“Well, you can’t really imagine the Buffalo media being really out in front of this sort of thing and this didn’t really get going until you’d left Boston. Besides you’re practically a local boy made good there. But it’s hot right now! Was Milton wrong?” (Milton was now suspended for sure, Kent was sure of that, and he could blame the girls instead of Kent for it.) “Did you and the rest of the team overreact? Just what do hockey players get up to on the road, anyway? Why’d you do what you did? What are kangaroo courts? Should they be tolerated in sports? Was this hazing or something else?” Ira made little loops in the air with his hands, as if he was loosening up his wrists before a round of golf. “So you get to go hang out with your boy Jimmy and with Ellen and make your case and I know it kills you to be on the same page with old Grapes but it gets the message out and I understand Barry Melrose has a few things to say too. In a really great looking suit by the way although I’m not so sure about the tie.”

Kent had to agree it was hard to be positive about the Melrose tie wardrobe some days, although it paled next to the Cherry jacket wardrobe, but rather than wander farther afield into the wastelands of sartorial detailing with Ira, he asked “Any idea on the date?”

“Well, the sooner the better and I know you just got back from a roadie but we can fly you over this afternoon and get you back not too late for your bedtime. You can drop off the cat—we’re calling him Kit Purrson by the way—and get changed into something that’ll work on the show—one of your newer Pendletons will be fine although I’d go with the lighter blues really—we want you looking low-key and friendly just the kid from next door America’s little hockey bro sounds like the best angle. Huckleberry Finn with a championship ring. Bring an extra shirt so you don’t wear the same thing on both shows and maybe plan to spend the night. The car will be there in a couple of hours so be ready! I’ll call Jimmy’s and Ellen’s people myself and let them know you’re coming! When you get back we can talk about the idea _GQ_ has been pitching for a fashion shoot with you and Zimmermann. It’ll be great! Oh, and check with Gretchen; she has some things we need you to autograph.”

Kent smiled and said “Sure thing, Ira,” and went forth, silently cursing Ira, Jimmy Kimmel, Milton, Milton’s libido, Milton’s pick-ups, Don Cherry, Ellen, and whoever had decided to name his cat Kit Purrson, plus Barry Melrose’s wardrobe, and the editorial staff at _GQ_ for good measure, as he went to autograph things, settle up with the accounting office, and collect the cat.  
He was a little amazed at how quickly they’d been able to get him booked on either show—maybe there was a deadly illness afflicting the usual guest pool.

 

As soon as he was back home, Kent unpacked his dirty clothes, set his road suit aside to go to the cleaners, and repacked his overnight bag. He also released the cat from the carrier and let the beast roam around while he set up one of the bathrooms for the cat’s use. “I have to go away again,” he told the cat. “I’d leave the television on for you to watch me on Jimmy Kimmel, but I don’t think you’d be all that impressed.” 

In spite of the Cone of Shame, the cat had made it up onto the bathroom sink counter and was nudging Kent. He began rubbing the cat’s ears. “I’m sorry about the name,” he told the cat. “it’s pretty dumb. Maybe I can call you something else at home? Kit Purrson can be your stage name, or your internet nym, or whatever.” The cat nudged him again, which was less than comfortable, given the Cone of Shame and a couple of bruises Kent had collected in Toronto and Boston, and Kent expanded the petting. “Maybe we could go with a hockey name. How about le gros Bill, or Bill for short? Ten Stanley Cups as a player, and the second-fastest hat trick in the NHL, and they offered to make him Governor-General of Canada.” The cat purred a bit, and Kent scratched his way down the cat’s backbone. “You like being named for Jean Béliveau? He was a great guy. Let’s go with—”

The doorbell rang, followed by a lot of urgent knocking. Kent apologized to the cat and went to answer the door. One of Ira’s people, Raquel, was waiting there. Kent liked Raquel a lot; she was low-key, she let him finish his sentences, she didn’t call him pet names, and she didn’t wear four-inch heels that made him wince just to look at. And when she asked him to go above and beyond, she apologized.

“Kent, I am so sorry, I know he’s been through a lot, but Ellen’s people would really like you to bring the cat.”

“Oh.” He wondered if this was going to call for a frenzied safari through the house to locate a cat who’d decided to hide inside a set of box springs.

“If you’ve got your bag ready, I’ll get it to the car while you round him up.” He gave her his carryon and went to see if he could catch his cat.

He found the cat still in the bathroom where he’d set up the litterbox, engaged in the use of same. The cat gave him some serious side-eye. Kent turned on the exhaust fan.

“I’m sorry, take your time, there’s no real rush, Bill. But it looks like we’re both going to see Ellen. She’s nice; I hope you like her.” Because what his life really needed was to bring Ellen DeGeneres a cat that was ready to go medieval on her, her staff, her audience, the set, and the crew. Even if he’d brought the beast on request, it would be his fault. He started gathering together the little travelling water and food dishes, and tipped some cat litter into the tray that clipped onto the bottom of the carrier. The cat finished scraping the cat litter in the main tray around, and jumped up on the counter again. Kent grabbed him and began inserting him into the carrier. “I promise, your very own chicken when we get home. One of those little game hens, maybe. A poussin in butter sauce. Be nice here, please.”

The cat acceded to his reimprisonment without too much angst, and Kent opened the bathroom door to find Raquel poised to knock. “How’s it going?”

“I need to get some of his dry food, and then I guess we’re good to go,” Kent told her.

“Have you had lunch yet?” Ira had learned the hard way, and now trained all his staff that hockey players were much more cooperative and good-natured when they were fed early and often.

“No,” Kent told her.

“I hit In-and-Out on the way over, and I grabbed some of the food the vet recommended;” she told him, “it’s in the car. Let’s go.”

He hefted the carrier. “Well, Bill, we’re off to see the wizard.”

They flew Southwest (Raquel apologized, but they did have the most flights to Burbank, after all) and they were all in the A boarding group, which surprised him, until he realized Ira had been planning this since Milton’s problem had appeared on Twitter, if not from when the cat first showed up on his radar. No one blinked when he handed the gate agent the boarding passes for himself and the cat. Because people bought seats for their pets every day, instead of trying to fit the carrier under the seat like carry-on luggage. This was Vegas, after all.

The flight attendants apologized for not being able to serve the cat, even though Kent hadn’t asked them to, and also apologized for not being able to let him take the cat out of the carrier, even though he hadn’t asked about that either. After a couple of interactions, he realized they wanted to see the cat face to face, and suggested they could all meet Kit Purrson (and winced inwardly, again, over the dreadful cuteness of the name) once everyone had deplaned, and maybe even take pictures of him on the tarmac at Burbank.

The man across the aisle looked at him. “You’re traveling with a cat?”

Kent agreed that this was the case.

“Why?”

“My employer said I had to,” Kent explained, and while it was not strictly true that Ira was his employer, he knew that both owners and management preferred players to do what the PR department wanted (see the incident with the Bellagio fountains). So it was close enough to true for a stranger on a plane.

“Are you someone’s personal assistant? Or a trained animal handler?”

How is this my life, Kent thought. If someone had predicted this day to them back in Rimouski, would he and Zimms have believed it or just laughed themselves stupid? Kent wished, not for the first time, he could travel back and warn younger Kent. At least this time it would be _funny_. He took a breath. “I’m a professional hockey player,” he said.

The man looked at him. “Seriously.”

“Yes. My name is Kent Parson, and I play for the Las Vegas Aces.”

“I don’t know much about hockey, but flying around with cats doesn’t seem like a big part of it.”

“Not usually,” Kent assured him. He wondered if mentioning Buff’s theory that there was a well of unreality somewhere on the grounds of the old Flamingo Hotel that constantly seeped out into the atmosphere of Las Vegas would help, or just make things worse.

The man shook his head and said “Well, I guess they pay you enough that they can ask you to fly around with cats,” and went back to reading whatever was on his laptop.

Kent left him to it and closed his eyes. Maybe he could get dinner at the Smokehouse. He’d mention it to Raquel; he thought it was on the way from one studio to the other. He could get crab cakes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kent's penance pilgrimage drops by the Ellen DeGeneres show.

Kent and the cat found themselves in side-by-side makeup chairs almost before they knew they were in the building. Kent had been shaved (again, even though he didn’t see much need for it) and was being moisturized and having his face spackled while a make-up specialist and a couple of production assistants contemplated the cat.

“I could brush it but there’s not much…”

“Not really, mostly just the tail…”

“But the collar…”

“Yeah, but the Cone of Shame is never not funny…”

“Yes, but it’s so…”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Is there something wrong?” Kent asked. The cat just looked bored.

They looked at him apologetically. One of the PAs spoke up first. “We know he has to have the collar, but it’s just so—I mean, it’s really kind of—”

Kent looked at the cat, and at the Cone of Shame. “He’s had it on for a few days; I expect it could stand cleaning.”

“Could we?”

“I don’t think he’ll be able to do much damage to himself while you do that. Or I could hold him.” The cat was handed over, without the collar, which was carefully washed and dried, and then replaced without too much complaint by the wearer.

Once in the green room, Kent petitioned Raquel on the subject of dinner at The Smokehouse. “I guess so.” she said “It doesn’t look like it’s too far out of our way…do you mind eating early? Or we could get it to go, if you don’t mind.”

“That would work—and see if the driver would like anything, since we’re keeping her out over dinnertime.” Raquel pulled up the menu on her tablet, and started taking notes on what Kent wanted.

One of the PAs from the makeup session reappeared; Kent thought her name was Monica but wasn’t certain. “So, we’re ready to get started then. Can you just carry the cat out?”

Kent started to bite his lip, then realized this might disrupt whatever goop had been placed on his lips. “I guess so—I mean, he’s been pretty mellow so far, but I don’t know about loud noises. Can you guys do anything about that?”

“Oh, sure—we’ll play the music really softly, and we’ll have the audience applaud first, and then let you come in—we can fix all that in post-production. Do you think you can dance and carry the cat at the same time?”

“I—I guess so. I mean, I can wiggle my hips or something, maybe shimmy a little.”

“Great! I’ll go tell them about the noise, and someone will come get you in just a second.”

Kent took a minute to look the cat in the eye as he took him back out of the carrier. “Bro, I really appreciate your good attitude so far, and I hope you’ll keep playing along just a little while longer. Then you can have a nap, and maybe we can make it home tonight and sleep at home. Are we cool?” He hefted the cat up so he could put his front paws on Kent’s shoulder and look around. The Cone of Shame hit Kent in the face as the cat turned his head.

Kent made his way onto the set with an awkward hip shimmy, clutching the cat and the knowledge that Ellen was not known for gratuitous cruelty to her guests.

He questioned that almost at once, as she seized his snapback while they were sort-of dancing at each other, and placed it on her own head, Aces logo to the front. She followed this up by ruffling his hair and declaring that he looked like a little baby chick.

“Please don’t, Ellen,” he managed. “Next week we play the Sharks, and I can hear Brent Burns calling me a baby chick as he slams me into the boards.”

“Aww, no, really? He’d be mean to you on purpose?”

“Well, not with any ill-will in his heart, but it’s what they pay him for—guys like him are there to keep guys like me from scoring.”

“I don’t see how he could he could keep you from scoring, if you really wanted to.” Her eyes were crinkling up, and Kent could see where this was going.

“Well, if we’re talking about hockey here, he can keep me from scoring a lot. He’s really good at that.” There was a sort of mass giggle from the audience. “And he wouldn’t really try to hurt me, but he’s seven inches taller than I am and he weighs fifty pounds more, so—“ Kent shrugged. “And now he’ll be calling me a baby chick while he does it.”

She grinned at him in a way that clearly said sorry, not sorry, and reached out to pet the cat. “Is this your new buddy? Did you really find him on the street?”

“He crawled out of a storm drain while I was watching,” Kent told her.

“Can I hold him?” She reached out and he handed the cat over, hoping for the best. “Oh, he feels like velvet!” She parked the cat in her lap and began petting him. “Listen to him purr!” She managed to get the cat and her microphone close enough together that everyone could hear the cat. “He’s got an Instagram account, too!” Pictures began to appear on the monitors while the audience cooed.

Without stopping the cat massage, Ellen looked him dead in the eye. “Why’d you call him Kit Purrson? Is it because he purrs so much?”

“Well, I think someone in the office named him. I was thinking about naming him after Jean Béliveau, who played for Montreal, back in the day. He won the Stanley Cup ten times,” he added, since he suspected very few people there besides him had ever heard of le gros Bill.

“Wow! Ten times! That’s a lot! So, did they let you take the Cup home when you won it?”

“Well, they let players on the winning team have the cup for 24 hours, and we did a little road trip. We started out in Quebec, up where some of my cousins live, in a place called St. Chrysostome, and then we went down across the border to a little town called Chazy—I played on the rink there when I was a kid.” Kent explained the history of the Scotts’ Memorial Rink as best he could—it seemed like a good bet for making him look like a Really Nice Guy and the NHL pro-family (even if he’d had very little to do with the development or maintenance of the Scotts’ Memorial Rink.) ”Crossing the border with the Cup was something else—the local detachment of the Mounties sent a couple of guys with a car to escort us down the highway—”

“Red coats and all?”

“Yes, they were in their dress uniforms, because this was Canada, after all. And when we got to the border crossing there were New York State Police cars waiting for us, and they made a big deal about transferring the Cup’s protection from the Mounties to the state police. It was like escorting the Queen or something.”

“Aw, neat!”

“So we set up down in Chazy, and—”

“I thought you were from Rochester.”

“Well, I am, but my father’s family is from around there, and from right across the state line in Vermont. In Lake Champlain.” He knew he was starting to sound like an idiot, but didn’t see how to make Isle la Motte make sense. He wished he had managed a nap that afternoon.

“You mean on the other side of the lake, or an island?”

He reminded himself that thinking Ellen DeGeneres was just a dippy blonde was dangerous, and gave thanks that she wasn’t at the same time. “Yeah, Dad grew up on Isle La Motte. It’s, um, well, it’s the kind of place where if you’re not from around there you’ve never heard of it. My grandparents had a dairy farm, and some orchards. It’s mostly farms and things around there.”

“Ben and Jerry’s country!”

“Well, sort of.” More like Cabot Creamery country, but he wasn't up to explaining that. 

“So what did you do after that?”

“Well, we flew the cup over to Rochester, and let people come to see it there.”

“That’s a lot of people—did you charge for that?”

“You aren’t allowed—you can ask for donations for a charity, but only if people want to give something, really. So we asked people to donate for youth hockey teams and stuff. They were raising money for an ice machine in Chazy, and those are pretty pricy.”

“Well, that all sounds so nice.” The cat had become so relaxed that he was draped over Ellen’s lap like a towel. “Aw, look, your baby’s asleep.”

Kent simultaneously marveled over the cat’s ability to nap and envied it.

“So, you were on the road when you found him. Did he travel around with the team?”

“No, somebody flew him back from Boston, after we had a vet check him out. One of our traveling secretary’s assistants, Joe Brevard. He’s a really great guy, very thoughtful and efficient,” Kent added, on the chance that Joe’s mother or maybe his grandmother back in Provo watched Ellen regularly. “I mean, we went to Canada this trip; it would have been a lot to put him through.”

“You really get around!”

“Well, you know how your mom would say people couldn’t come over to play all the time; you had to take turns and go and play at their houses, too?” That got a laugh.

“So are you going to win it again this year?”

“Well, we plan to, just like we do every year, but then, so does everyone else in the league, so—” He shrugged.

“But you traded Artie!”

“Well, he volunteered really. Because Vancouver is closer to his mom. We were trying to work out a deal that would let Matt Gertsen bring his family down to Vegas, because his wife’s family lives there, and after the wreck and everything,” Kent shrugged again.

“So people offered to be traded to help him out? That’s really nice.”

“Yeah, yeah, it was.” Artemyev had hated Las Vegas ever since he got there and realized just how hot it was, outside the air conditioning; this hadn’t been obvious in any of the _Ocean’s Trilogy_ movies. He’d been a good team player in spite of that, but the chance to go someplace cooler (and a whole two hours closer to Vladivostok) in the multi-team trade that sent Artemyev northwest to Vancouver and Downey east from Vancouver over to Calgary (making his family much closer to his in-laws in Medicine Hat, which might or might not be seen as a blessing) and made it possible for Gertie to come down to Vegas was a godsend for him.

“That’s so supportive. I know, most people don’t think of hockey players that way, but I guess it’s different on the inside, though.”

“Well, people think what they want to think. But Gertsen’s a really great guy, and when stuff like that happens you really want to help somehow.”

“Sure, sure, you really do.” Ellen grinned at him.

Eventually (or after ten minutes or so, or a short eternity), Kent was able to retrieve the cat, but not his snapback and leave, to a round of very quiet applause, since the cat was still asleep. He dropped into a chair in the green room and stared piteously at Raquel.

“That seems to have gone pretty well,” she said. “I mean, it got the whole wow-what-a-nice-guy-thing set up, which is what we wanted. And the cat was great. Were you really going to name him Jean, or Béliveau, or whatever?”

“Bill, or Big Bill, maybe. Béliveau’s nickname was le gros Bill. While he was playing for the Canadiens—”

“I caught that. Ten Cup wins is a lot.”

“It was a smaller league then, of course. He also scored a hat trick in 44 seconds once. The second-fastest in the NHL. While playing Boston.”

“That must have made it all the sweeter,” Raquel said. She wasn’t a master of hockey trivia, but she was clear on team rivalries, which mattered more to someone in PR anyway.

“Are we done? Can I wash my face now?”

“In just a bit. They have some things for you to autograph.” She handed him a Sharpie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to all of Ellen’s fans, and to everyone associated with the show. 
> 
> The Smokehouse is a real Los Angeles area restaurant, conveniently located on the way from Ellen to Jimmy Kimmel, and full of the sort of nourishing, sustaining food a hockey player would require. It’s an Old Hollywood institution, which is agreeable to Kent. Raquel had a salad, to balance out her lunch from In and Out Burger.
> 
> Seriously, Jean Béliveau was it, and I’m betting he was one of Bob Zimmermann’s childhood idols. The ten rings are not invented for this fic, and neither was the 44-second hat trick, or the fact that he turned down the chance to be Governor-General of Canada. The nickname le gros Bill (Big Bill) came from a Canadian movie; Béliveau was felt to resemble the lead actor. 
> 
> The [Scotts’ Memorial Rink](http://www.pressrepublican.com/news/local_news/smooth-skating-for-the-scotts-memorial-rink/article_ae66bef1-275c-5671-931c-54d0dbc64674.html) is a real thing. I’m headcanoning Kent into a Rochester childhood, followed by a stay with his paternal grandparents in the Plattsburgh-western Lake Champlain area when he became too much of a handful for his mother after his parents’ divorce. There are a lot of dairy farms and apple orchards on that side of the family. Ben and Jerry's and Cabot Creamery are regional brands. 
> 
> TRAGEDY AND GRIMNESS ALERT:  
> Here's the backstory for Matt Gertsen and his family: Just before Christmas 2014, his wife, father, and three-year old son were in a car wreck. His father and son were killed; his wife was severely injured. Because her family lived in Las Vegas, he managed, with a lot of cooperation from the other players mentioned here (who do next exist in the real NHL) and their teams, to get transferred. His wife, who is in a nursing home with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, gave birth prematurely to another child. His mother has moved in with them to look after the children and keep things together.


	3. Chapter 3

By seven that evening, Kent was reaffirmed in several of his opinions. First of all, he hated Los Angeles traffic. Secondly, he did not enjoy having people mess with his face, and he didn’t much care for the smell of makeup, let alone the feel of the stuff. He hated being treated by production staff as a creature somewhat dimmer than a dog, and not one of the smart ones like a border collie. And he loved the Smokehouse. It almost made up for all the rest, and it was a shame it wasn’t closer to Staples Center, because then he could eat there when they had road games with the Kings.

“So this is what we’re going to do!” the latest PA told in, speaking in a loud, cheerful voice and using small, simple words. “You’re going to go out and stand there between these two guys!” He gestures at the guy in the golf shirt and the guy in the band shirt, both of them around 6 feet 4 inches barefoot.”Him and him! OK?”

“All right,” Kent said.

“And you’ll each have one of these signs!” He waved the little five by eight inch cards around; they had fancy little borders, and were numbered 1, 2, and 3 in a large, old-fashioned font.

“So I should hold Number 2?” Kent asked, sounding a little confused. The guy in the band shirt smirked a little.  


“Yes! Yes, that’s right! That’s what we want you to do!”

“OK.” Kent said, then waited a beat. “Why?”

The guy in the golf shirt cut a look at him, and then made his face even blanker.

“It’ll be funny! Don’t worry; just go out there and hold up your little card so people can see the 2.” The PA took a breath. “And make sure it’s the right way up, OK?”

“OK,” Kent said, as docilely as he could manage. “Can we practice first?” Band Shirt Guy smirked again, and Golf Shirt Guy stayed deadpan.

“Sure! OK! Let’s run through this!” They practiced walking up and standing just so. Kent resisted the urge to hold his sign upside down, or in front of his face, or with the number facing in instead of out. For some reason, this made the PA more anxious. Kent realized he was fine with that, even if it wasn’t nice to agitate the support staff.

Finally they went out and stood in front of the studio audience, while Jimmy Kimmel explained that one of these three guys was a professional hockey player—yes, from the NHL!—and the audience was to pick out the real one. They stepped forward when their numbers were called, and people were told to applaud if they thought that Number 1, 2, or 3 was the real player. It was far from the most demeaning moment Kent has sustained in the interests of public relations since he was fourteen years old, and he played along, looking at the man on either side of him as if he, too, was wondering which one was the real hockey player.

He estimated that at least seventy percent of the studio audience, and possibly as much as eighty percent, did not think he was a professional hockey player. Most people seemed to think it was Golf Shirt Guy, who had the sort of looks, complete with broken nose, that got described as “ruggedly handsome”, while Band Shirt Guy was a little overweight.

“Are you sure?” Kimmel asked the audience, and they went through it again. The audience was definitely trending team Golf Shirt. Kimmel aimed the smarm directly at them, “Will the real hockey player step forward?”

Kent felt the two men beside him shift their weight, as if they were about to move, and he took a long step forward, dropped to a crouch, signed his card, and handed it to a brunette in the front row who had cheered loudly for Number 2 both times. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Yes!” she said.

He grinned at her and stood up. He suspected they had been neighbors—if you could call it that—back when he first moved to Vegas, but mentioning the Meridian was chancy. Not all his neighbors there had been lawfully employed, after all. He shook hands with Golf Shirt Guy and Band Shirt Guy, and then endured a hug from Kimmel.

“Are we going to play Bad Tweets?”

“Aw, Kent, how’d you guess?” They sat down, and Kent braced himself to be part of the titillation of America.

“So,” he was told, after several of the Tweets denouncing him as a sex-negative, hateful meanie who was mean and hateful were read, “Why do you hate fun, Kent?”

“Because I’m a hateful meanie who is mean and hateful!” Kent said, trying not to think about the Midnight Bomber what bombs at midnight. He got a laugh, and managed to keep his momentum well enough that Kimmel didn’t interrupt him. “No, I love fun.” He smirked. “But even more than fun, I love winning, and that requires that we work as a team, and one of the things we don’t do is be inconsiderate of our teammates.”

He held up his hand. “No, no, bear with me, I know what you’re going to say, but my guy broke a rule—not an organization rule, not a team rule, but a fundamental hockey rule, one that’s probably as old as the first hockey road game.” Kent took a deep breath. “The rule is: thou shalt not interfere with thy roommate’s sleep, especially because if you stay up ‘til all hours, he will have to pick up your slack.” 

He paused for just a moment. “There’s a corollary, of course. If you are presented with the sort of god-given opportunity to get close to your fans and supporters we’re talking about here, you make sure you find someplace to do it where it won’t keep your teammates—and especially your roommate—awake until you’re done. Unless, of course, you’ve been kind enough to see to it that they have also had a chance at such an opportunity, and even then, all of you might like a little privacy from each other.” 

Kent paused for the whistling and hooting to subside. “Or not, of course, if that’s what you’re into.” He smirked while certain portions of the audience got louder. “But you don’t just assume you can commandeer a shared room for happyfuntimes without asking your roomie first. I mean,” he shrugged “it’s not as if we don’t get paid enough to go off and get a room to enjoy our happyfuntimes in privacy, so I’m not sure what my guy’s problem was here—I hope he wasn’t planning on being done in twenty minutes.”

That got the laugh he was hoping for, and Kent went on. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out happily for everyone, but when you’re team captain, one of the things you’re responsible for making sure everyone works well together, and that sometimes means letting one of your guys know his behavior is out of line. That’s not the fault of the other people involved, of course, but then, he should have been more considerate of them as well as of his roommate, I think.” He smiled as guilelessly as he could. “So that’s another argument for shelling out some of his per diem cash to get a room on another floor.”

His host put on a look of fake concern—faker than fat-free gravy, Kent thought—and said “So, from your perspective it’s team welfare that’s at stake? You’re worried about the roommate losing sleep, but not the guy who is,” he smirked “entertaining guests, for want of something we can say on television?”

Kent rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s his lookout. He’s an adult. He knows his professional responsibilities—or he should. And I think Casey Stengel addressed that point a good many years ago, so—” Kent shrugged.

“When did Stengel have anything to do with hockey?”

“Oh, I think his observation applies to all sports. I mean, I haven’t done enough of the necessary in-depth research myself, but there appears to be what you could call a consensus that has developed among those who have and who have compared their results.”

“Even among women’s sports?” Kent made a mental note to tell Ira he was owed for not having punched this fountain of smarm between the eyeballs.

“I have heard nothing from my sister athletes to the contrary,” Kent said, and hoped he would be given a chance to live this down, or at least explain himself.

The subject was changed; Kent hoped that meant they were done with it. “So, as we have demonstrated here tonight, a lot of people don’t recognize you as a hockey player.”

“The pads add twenty pounds,” Kent interjected. “And the skates three inches. Zdeno Chàra is much less intimidating in street clothes. Especially if it’s a bunny suit.”

“Heh-heh. As I was saying, a lot of people don’t recognize you as a hockey player, so we’ve prepared a little overview of your career.” Pictures began to flash on a monitor, for the benefit of the audience. “So, here you are in the Juniors, in Canada. Why Canada?”

“My grandmother’s Canadian, and I was playing with some cousins there when a scout caught the game.” Sooner or later, it would come down to Zimmermann. It always did.

“In Rimouski! What kind of a name is Rimouski, anyway?”

“Look, I don’t argue about Canadian place names. Not only do I, as an American, have no solid ground to stand on, what with places like Scratch Ankle, Alabama and Hot Coffee, Mississippi, but they were nice enough to let me play hockey there.” Kent made another mental note to let the people he kept in touch with back in Rimouski that none of this was his fault.

“Is that in, like, French Canada? Did you speak French then?”

“Yeah, it’s in Quebec. I spoke French when I got there; my grandmother is from Quebec. I just couldn’t read and write it.”

“So, they’re famous for hockey in Rimouski?”

“Sidney Crosby played for Océanic before I did, so I think they’re pretty well-known, at least in Canadian hockey terms. The town’s on the St. Lawrence Seaway, so there’s that, too.”

“And you played with Jack Zimmermann!” Kent suspected that less than ten per cent of the studio audience knew who Jack Zimmermann was.

Kent managed to smile. “I did indeed. And I got to play against him just a few days ago, which is almost but not quite as much fun as playing with him.”

He wasn’t sure whether he’d wrong-footed Kimmel or not, but Kent thought he just might be making a quick adjustment.

“And how was he doing, your old liney?” “Liney” was said with a smirk which Kent refused to acknowledge.

“Oh, pretty good. I mean, his eyes were clear and his coat looked nice and glossy. I didn’t check to see if his nose was cold and wet, though, but he seemed lively enough.”

“Ah-hah.” Maybe that was throwing him more off-target, but this was a man who could recover fast. “You say you didn’t check his nose?”

“No, no, I didn’t. That’s another old rule of hockey; if you take of your gloves and touch another player’s face when you’re on the ice, things get exciting very quickly. His teammates will not care that you just wanted to be sure he was healthy.”

The hockey fans in the audience laughed; the people who knew a little bit about hockey joined in, and the rest just waited, hoping this conversation would go in a more interesting direction.

“And you had a Mashkov Moment!”

A Mashkov Moment? Was that a thing now? “I did indeed! I won’t need to see a chiropractor for at least a month, and I think I may be half an inch taller. So there’s that.”

“You sound like it wasn’t personal.”

“No, it was hockey. I ran into his goalie, and one of the other old hockey rules is that you must always protect your goalie. So you might say it was a mandatory Mashkov moment.”

“Really!”

“And while I’d hate for my teammates, especially the d-men, to think I didn’t value them the way I should, I’d love to have a Mashkov of my own. I’d feed him right and everything.”

“And call him George?”

“Only if his mother named him Yuri.”

“Well, getting back to the highlights of your career—”

Kent caught the next image and buried his face in his hands.

“—here you are with the Stanley Cup!”

There were a lot of shots of Kent with the Cup out there. Shots taken on the ice, taking the cup in a clumsy hand-off from the Commissioner. Shots of him holding the Cup overhead, both stationary and skating around the ice. Shots of him handing the Cup off to Buff. Shots from his Cup Day. Shots posed in various pieces of Aces’ clothing items (available for purchase online, at the Aces' brick-and-mortar store, or around Las Vegas!). These, of course, were the shots from the Bellagio Fountains. The g-string was pretty much invisible in these, although some of the bruises did show through the concealer they’d dabbed over extensive areas of his body. He wondered, again, why they hadn’t bothered to hide those as well when they cleaned away the lines of the g-string.

Eventually the audience noise died down. “You know, I’m sensing, I’m sensing here, Kent, that however popular these Cup shots may be with other people, you’re not too fond of them.”

Kent took his face out of his hands. “Well, no. For one thing, you never know when the Cup will take offense and then—Wham! There you are, just like the New York Rangers, stuck in the wilderness for over fifty years.”

“What?”

Kent reminded himself not everyone had spent four years of their life with Jack Zimmermann whispering NHL history into their ears as bedtime stories. “The Curse of 1940. That’s when they paid off the mortgage on Madison Square Garden, and when the Rangers won the Cup, the Garden management burned the mortgage paperwork in the Cup.”

“Oh, really?”

“Personally, I don’t think that was what did it. The Cup’s very Canadian, you know, and celebrating fiscal solvency probably wouldn’t be a problem. It’s the way the Rangers put out the fire. I mean, anyone would take that badly.”

“What?”

“Look, the Cup’s been used as a font for baptisms. It’s been used to serve wedding punch. People have eaten cereal out of it. The Cup’s been cool with that. Drinking champagne out of it when you win is pretty much mandatory. It is not, however, going to take kindly to being used as a urinal.”

“Well, who would—wait. It’s a hunk of metal. It isn’t even the original cup anymore.”

“Don’t tell anyone in the NHL it’s just a hunk of metal. We’ll have to fight you.” Kent shifted in his chair. “Just let me add, even though this has nothing to do with the Cup, that people don’t want to try and dance around in the Bellagio fountains. The water’s a lot deeper than they make it look in those pictures. It’s four feet at the shallow end.”

“Oh, yeah, not a good plan, because the water gets even deeper when you get to where the jets are. It’s like—what—ten, fifteen feet there.”

“They told me thirteen. And they only drain the basin every eighteen months or so.”

There was a collective, uncoached _ewwwwwwwwwww_ from the studio audience.

“Yep, yep, totally true. I mean, can you imagine their bill for pool shock?” He punched Kent in the arm.

Kent made a face. “Stay out of the water. Just—don’t get in there, OK? You won’t be making a beautiful memory, trust me.”

“You sound like you don’t have many happy memories of that shoot.”

Kent shook his head. “Not even, man, not even.” He shivered. “Even now, I can only look back in horror.”

“Then there was the Olympics!”

This accompanied a clip of Kent sliding belly-down across the ice and colliding with a Goliath from the KHL who had absorbed too many steroids to get out of the way quickly. 

“I think Sweden played a helluva game; they were great all through, and so was Finland, especially when you consider respective population size. And I’m happy for Sid, of course.”

“But you lost.”

“Yes, we did.”

“And you’re happy for Sidney Crosby?”

“Look, being anointed as the savior of hockey before you’re old enough to drink isn’t all that much fun. I’m glad I missed out on that.” Kent knew that was true—part of him, even now, wished he’d been given that much credit at age seventeen, but every other part of him was grateful he hadn’t been, grateful down to the bone. “Anything he does is not good enough, and never will be. If he ended up with a dozen rings it still wouldn’t be enough for some people.”

“But you lost.”

“I can live with having mixed feelings about things. Most people have to, after all.”

“But that’s so—adult.”

“Yeah, well, life is full of annoyances.”

“So, is it true what they say about hockey players and food?” As a practitioner of offensive technique himself, Kent had to admire the way Kimmel shifted attacks when Kent failed to given him the opening he was trying for.

“Well, that depends what it is they say. If it’s that we eat a lot, it’s true—but that’s the case for almost all professional athletes, really, and quite a few amateurs.”

“So, what do you eat?”

Kent wondered where this was going. He looked Kimmel over and said “Depends on the time of year. Right now, during the season, I need to get a minimum of 6300 calories a day, no more than 20% of it fat.” He licked his lower lip ever so slightly. “Carbohydrates for energy and protein to repair and maintain muscle. More protein and less fat in the offseason when I’m recuperating and putting on muscle.” He just barely licked his upper lip, and kept looking at Kimmel. “Make it about six meals a day or so, depending.”

“That’s…that’s a lot of food. I hope we got you a good dinner, maybe something from In-and-Out Burger.”

“Jimmy, I have to admit, I may be the only nonvegetarian between Texas and the West Coast who isn’t all that impressed with In-and-Out Burger.” He shrugged. “We got takeout from The Smokehouse; I should be good for a little while longer.”

“Well, if you’re not, let us know; I’m sure we can find something around here.”

Kent licked his lips again. “That’s good to know.”

“And stop looking at me like that.”

Kent grinned, with a lot of teeth.

“So, what are you going to win this year?”

A star in my heavenly crown, for not punching you, Kent thought. “A bit early for that.”

“Come on—”

“No, I’m not saying. The Hockey Gods will send their elder prophet, Don Cherry, down from Canada to smite me.”

“Don Cherry?”

“He’s old, but I’m not taking any chances. There are stories, man.”

And then it was time for a commercial break, and the next guest, and Kent was able to move a little farther out of range and be the nice friendly guy who was actually interested in you, and then there was some other stuff, and then the show was over

When he got back to the green room, Raquel was waiting with a Sharpie. As he took it, Kent asked “Are we flying back or staying?”

“Flying; Mr. D’Annunzio had business down in Irvine, and he’s stopping off in Vegas to check in with Bob and Ray.”

Kent wondered what had brought on a face to face meeting among the owners; then again, maybe D’Annunzio just wanted to catch a live game, since he didn’t catch all that many in Marin County. With any luck, whatever it was didn’t matter to him. 

“That’s very thoughtful of him, to give us a ride,” he told Raquel. “He does know about the cat, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Meridian Condominiums are a luxury development near the Strip that developed serious financial problems just before Kent came to Las Vegas. Life there became [unpleasantly interesting](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-12/after-las-vegass-housing-crash-fraud-ferraris-and-gun-fights) for a while. 
> 
> Bad Tweets is a regular feature of Jimmy Kimmel's show. Celebrities are asked to read (sincerely or otherwise) negative tweets about themselves aloud. 
> 
> The Tick, folks. What can I say?
> 
> Casey Stengel, a Major League Baseball player and manager from before the designated hitter era, maintained that staying up all night having sex was not harmful to ball players. The real damage, he maintained, came from the players staying up all night trying to find someone to have sex with. 
> 
> It is possible too much of Kent's interior monologue is based on animated cartoons. I guess it depends on how you feel about animated cartoons.  
>  
> 
> I will write the story of Kent and the Cup in the Bellagio Fountains. But not this week. I put Kent’s Cup win in 2011, which means the Aces beat out the Blackhawks for the King Clancy, and then the Bruins; Patrice Bergeron suffered in vain. Kent would have been 20 in the playoffs, and too young to tell PR to get screwed.
> 
> Zdeno Chàra is a bunny suit [here](http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/10/27/picture-of-the-day-zdeno-chara-as-a-pink-bunny-is-frightening/). You're welcome. 
> 
> The Curse of 1940 is a real hockey superstition. 
> 
> Kent is lying like a lying thing. When the US team lost their final game he sulked in his room until it was time to get on the plane to go home. 
> 
> There are indeed stories about Don Cherry from his coaching days, including one from his time in Boston, where he held a young player off the ground by the throat while telling him that the "optional" part of "optional skate" did not apply to him. 
> 
> D’Annunzio is one of the part-owners I have envisioned; he’s computer money. Bob Stern and Ray Balaban, the other owners of the Aces, are old Las Vegas hands. As Danny Ocean would put it, “They shook hands with Sinatra.”

**Author's Note:**

> Back in the days of the massive old-style productions, the minimum height, barefoot, for a Las Vegas showgirl was 5’8” (or 172.72 centimeters, for those of you playing in metric). The shoes added at least another three inches, and then there were the headdresses. UNLV has, among its collections, designs for old show costumes, many of which were by Bob Mackie.
> 
> Scandosotan and Scandakotan are terms sometimes used for Minnesotans and Dakotans of Scandinavian ancestry. The regional accent is supposed to reflect pronunciations typical of Scandinavia, especially around the vowels and the pitch of the language. People who know more than I do about this are welcome to weigh in. 
> 
> For those of you not from the northern part of the Midwestern US, "hot dish" = "casserole”. I know I'm old, but perhaps I'm not the only person out there who recalls a casserole (often Friday fare) that involved frozen fillets of some sort of white fish served over rice, which Campbell's Cheddar Cheese Soup/Sauce as a binding agent. I think my own generation adapted this to include frozen broccoli in the hopes of forcing an unavoidable vegetable into the mix. Jeannie probably left out the broccoli for the cat. 
> 
> Of course the cat is in a Cone of Shame. How could I resist?
> 
> I find the thought that Kent is so helpless in the face of the PR department's determination both amusing, and suggestive for his occasional desperate attempts at agency off the ice. Yes, I'll take a crack at the Bellagio photo shoot fic. Also, while the Bellagio Fountains are a Las Vegas icon, they are not ideal for your cavorting needs, as they are quite deep. 
> 
> Alexei Maskov is a part of the Check Please! ensemble; Brent Burns and Jordin Tootoo are real hockey players. 
> 
> For those who missed the second installment of this series because it has a tiny amount of mature content, one of Kent's teammates trespassed on his roommate's patience by having sex in their hotel room without warning him first. The team retaliated, because inconveniencing your roomie is Bad, and now Kent is handling damage control. For readers outside the US, Ellen DeGeneres and Jimmy KimmelIra host talk shows. 
> 
> It's not an accident Ira's dialogue includes no commas. If you think it's hard to read, imagine listening to it. 
> 
> The ultimate plaid shirt is made by Pendleton, especially in wool. The new Abercrombie and Fitch can suck it up and deal.  
> Check Please! fans who are hockey people are already aware of Don Cherry, who has a Wikipedia article and whose wardrobe has been extensively documented on the Internet. As a television personality, he’s sort of Canada’s cranky hockey great-uncle, full of very old-fashioned opinions, except when he isn’t. The reasons for the nickname Grapes are unclear, but a connection to sour grapes has been suggested. Barry Melrose is another former hockey player, coach, and television commenter, who is also a sharp-dressed man, although not in Don Cherry’s league.
> 
> I believe Ngozi has suggested Kent's family is from upstate New York. I'm working with Rochester as his hometown, which means that only someone unfamiliar with upstate New York, like Ira, could imagine residents of Buffalo seeing Kent as practically a local boy made good.  
>    
> Kent is very much talk show averse, which means Ira was able to get him booked with no trouble. People got bumped for this. 
> 
> Seriously, Jean Béliveau was it, and I’m betting he was one of Bob Zimmermann’s childhood idols. The ten rings are not invented for this fic, and neither was the 44-second hat trick, or the fact that he turned down the chance to be Governor-General of Canada. Also, given the sort of hair balls long-haired cats can produce (and I apologize for this squicky thought), a Bill the Cat from Bloom County reference seems reasonable. 
> 
> In-and-Out-Burger is a chain in the western US which has many devoted fans. 
> 
> The Smokehouse is a real restaurant in Burbank; it's on the way between the two studios Kent has to visit, and when I saw the menu, I knew he'd want to eat there. It's a part of Old Hollywood, at least by today's standards, as it dates back to 1946.


End file.
